


In Wait, Inaction

by vicariously kingly (pelted)



Series: One Half a Whole AU [2]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Red Thread of Fate, and yet they are taking their sweet sweet time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-10-25 22:48:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17734112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pelted/pseuds/vicariously%20kingly
Summary: The first time Charles and Arthur kissed, it tasted of gunmetal.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set immediately after Part 1 of this series (gang's still in Valentine), though you don't necessarily have to read it to understand.
> 
> Enjoy!

The first time Charles and Arthur kissed, it tasted of gunmetal.

On a day bright enough that the sun became a curse, atop a grassy hill overlooking grazing bison, Charles reflected on the bison’s importance to the land’s peoples while Arthur listened. _Truly_ listened, his arms folded over his saddle’s horn and attention square on the herd as Charles described how his mother spoke of following the great creatures across hundreds of unfenced, unbroken miles. Asked what questions he wanted the answers to, and didn’t interrupt when Charles digressed to topics he had most likely never thought twice about before: of genocide by proxy, by negligence and by design, and how the distinction didn’t ultimately matter to those paying the costs with their lives and livelihood. Speaking to Arthur was not the waste of time it often became with others. Although he pretended otherwise, he had a boundless curiousity for the natural world around them. Indulging that curiousity was far from the worst way to spend an afternoon.

Hunting trips had become their principle excuse and method of escaping the occasionally claustrophobic camp for a day or two. That day was the first Charles felt he knew Arthur well enough to take him bison hunting. 

“Rounded some up before,” Arthur said in a pause following Charles’ off-hand recitation of the animal’s variety of uses, “for this rich California woman who thought she could hook them up to a cart like a pair of oxen.”

Charles’ eyebrows shot up.

Catching the look, Arthur breathed an amused, weary sigh. “Somehow, she got them roped up to her fancy little carriage. Didn’t exactly go how she planned after that. Luckily, Dutch had it arranged that we got paid _before_ the bison crashed her into a cliff face.”

“Incredible,” Charles deadpanned, “that hadn’t caught on.”

Good humor twinkled in Arthur’s eyes, lightening his whole face. “You telling me that hauling goods is the one thing they ain’t good for?”

“Afraid so.” With the corner of his mouth twitching up. “Suppose I haven’t tried.”

“Another time, maybe.”

“When we’d like to make history as a pair of idiots, sure.”

“Reckon I’ve already accomplished one-half of that.”

“I’ve some catching up to do, then.”

“Seems like.”

Arthur’s ease was infectious. The twitch at the corner of Charles’ lip grew into a small smile. Arthur caught that, too, and turned his head away to hide what was undoubtedly smug satisfaction at brightening Charles’ mood. Why Arthur felt the need to hide his face whenever he and Charles were alone and getting along was still a mystery-- but, admittedly, a somewhat charming one. Back when Arthur had spent a large amount of his energy avoiding Charles, it had been nothing except frustrating. Now, there was no question of whether Arthur wished him gone. He didn’t. He never had. Some nights when sleep was a distant dream, the knowledge that he didn’t and never had hit Charles with all the force of a stampeding bison. In those moments, drowning seemed comparatively painless, and Charles understood acutely Arthur’s need to hide. 

It worsened even as it grew easier. The more they understood how to simply _be_ around each other, the clearer they saw each other’s lines and how close they could stand together, the heavier their shared space became, and the less they could ever imagine stepping away.

As he always did, Arthur looked back eventually, his expression schooled back into light curiousity. Charles met his eyes. Held his gaze. Realized he was still smiling, however slightly, when Arthur’s eyes dropped to his mouth and lingered. 

A slip of pink darted out, wetting Arthur’s top lip.

The _knowing_ hit Charles. What could be in their future ran across his mind, effectively scattering his thoughts. They were not so far away from one another, their horses set side-by-side. Charles was not so uncertain a horseman as to worry about unseating himself if he were to lean over and bridge the gap. To manifest wonderings into reality. To put his _knowing_ to the test, and assure them both that they could and would. 

_Would what, exactly?_

Well.

They wouldn’t know until they started.

That mystery was _frustrating._ Immensely so.

(That moment was not when they first kissed.)

Then: Arthur’s horse snorted and shivered, her head dipping low to lip unhappily at the scraggly grass atop their hill. A skinny nag from Valentine, she’d been purchased on the cheap in exchange for the mean Shire Hosea had pulled in and groomed into some manner of health under Arthur’s hand. Although he treated her just fine, it was obvious he missed Boadicea’s reliability and strength after she’d perished on the way up the Grizzly mountains. In any case, it showed that the bison had already passed over where they stood. The horse pulling and dropping tough grasses from the loose dirt shook Charles and Arthur from their temporary fixation and plopped them right back into the present.

Arthur cleared his throat, again glancing away and forward, toward the bison. He made a short, aborted gesture toward them, his words a jumbled noise caught in the back of his throat.

Charles nodded as if he’d spoken. Set his eyes on their original goal, his voice roughened even as they both pretended it wasn’t, and said, “We should get to it before they realize we’re watching. When they start running, stick to the herd’s outskirts. We’ll pick off the straggler.” 

“I’ll follow you,” Arthur said. “I trust you won’t lead me wrong.”

Charles reminded himself that he didn’t mean that as anything more than a simple statement about the hunt.

He half-succeeded in believing himself.

Rather than ask clarification about whether Arthur meant that _always_ in deference to the fact he’d have to answer the same question (and he wasn’t sure he’d decided how he would), he nudged Taima forward. Behind him, as he’d said he would, Arthur followed.

They made it halfway down the hill when a bullet kicked up dirt a hand’s width from Taima’s back legs. 

Taima shied a few steps forward, but regained her senses quickly, white ringing her eyes as her ears pinned and tail lashed. Arthur’s nag, on the other hand, reared with a surprised screech. Arthur yelped a _whoa!_ , then grunted in teeth-gritting pain as the horse bucked him from his seat. He tumbled to the ground, right shoulder slamming into the stone-scattered dirt and grasses.

The crack of gunfire and yell of a horse startled the herd. Large shaggy heads raised, scarcely taking stock of their intruders before they thundered away.

A dip and another hill away, previously hidden behind a massive crooked tree, crouched a man with a long-scoped rifle. Behind him, two others crested the hill on horseback, both driving their steeds hard in Charles’ and Arthur’s direction. Even with the sun at their back and shielding Charles from getting a great look beyond their roughened outline, pistols gleamed at their hips. Robbers, then, or-- _more likely,_ as they were attacking for all they knew two measly hunters-, bounty hunters.

Arthur Morgan had long sported one hell of a price tag. After hitting Cornwall’s train, it seemed they all had joined him in the high brackets. The women tended to be worth more for their information, and thus, alive. When it came to Dutch’s boys, however, the difference in payout between dead and alive wasn’t wide enough for comfort.

At the crest of the hill, the hunters pulled their pistols and fired. 

Bullets sunk into the ground beneath Taima’s hooves. One streaked past Charles’ ear in a sharp, fire-hot streak.

Another found its place in Arthur’s thigh. Charles heard his bit-off yell and saw red bloom on dirt-scoffed denim. Balanced precariously on one stable knee, Arthur curled reflexively to cover the wound while he reached for his pistol. 

Done with the whole situation, his nag bolted down the hill. She carried with her Arthur’s better weaponry. 

The hill’s elevation put them at a huge disadvantage. The riders were all but on them. Their sniper had undoubtedly finished reloading.

_Yet._

In two shots of a hunting rifle, the riders fell in a burst of viscera from their steeds.

One horse reared, disturbed by the dead weight tumbling from its back. The other raced past Charles, lacking command to the contrary from the body slumped in its saddle.

As single-minded as their assailants had been, Charles drove his heels into Taima’s sides, urging her up the hill and toward the sniper. Under the shade of his tree, the last hunter decided to make his last stand and raise his rifle. His aim, if true, would easily down either horse or rider. Charles was willing to take that chance, as long as his focus remained on _Charles._

The sniper’s body tensed, shoulder braced, barrel aimed for Charles’ head--

And just before he could pull the trigger, his gun jumped from his hands. 

Shot out by someone other than Charles. The only other person could be Arthur with his meager pistol. The heat of the moment was no place for admiration, but Charles couldn’t help sparing a warm, impressed thought at the skill required to make such a shot.

The sniper died with sheer bafflement on his face. Charles’ shot took him through the throat and laid him out under his tree, his hat falling beside his rifle.

Upon reaching the hunter’s post, Charles realized he was actually a _she_. Not that it mattered one way or another: they’d put an end to all three hunters’ lives with absolute prejudice, just as the hunters had been set on doing to them. 

By the looks of the heavy satchel strapped to her side, she likely had a fair amount of ammunition, if not valuables, on her person. Rather than immediately hop down and salvage what he could, Charles turned Taima around, moved her back where they’d came from, and jumped down from his saddle by Arthur’s side.

Arthur, who had gathered himself enough to limp up the hill and now stood lopsided and disgruntled at its crest, weight favoring his good leg. He had his hand pressed to the wound, his fingers lined in fresh red. 

“Sit down,” Charles instructed him, though he _knew_ Arthur knew better than to hobble around without bandages.

Apparently set to prove Charles wrong, Arthur stayed standing. Craned his neck and twisted his torso to look around, his whole body strung with the tension of a hunting dog sure of a nearby prey’s scent but unable to spot the damn thing. 

“How the hell’d they know we was here?” Teeth grit from pain and residual shock, Arthur pressed his mouth into a thin, whitened line. “Those weren’t no flea-bitten amateurs. We got real professionals on our hands.”

“We _had_ professionals on our hands. Not much they can do dead.” 

“Could’a been part of a larger group. We should move.”

“Think they would’ve made themselves known if they were together.”

“Don’t know that for sure.” A muscle in Arthur’s jaw jumped, the whites of his eyes bright. “You see where that damn horse of mine ran off to? Knew I should’ve sold her back soon as I could.”

“Arthur,” Charles repeated, reaching out to set his hands, gently, on his tense shoulders, “sit _down._ We need to check your leg.”

It wasn’t until Arthur met his eyes that he realized how high his heart sat in his throat.

Running into folks that wanted them dead wasn’t new. Neither were fights, guns or no. But every fight was liable to be the last. Their odds of making it out fell at the same rate as their bounties rose. In a lot of ways, a shot to the head was much kinder than succumbing to infection on the road, or taking a few too many knocks to the head and waking dumb and deaf, or rotting in jail before swinging, or running and running and running until there was nowhere left to go. 

Didn’t mean Charles wished any of it on their gang. Least of all Arthur.

Whatever Arthur saw in Charles’ expression made him relent. He threw up a hand and fussed about hanging around too long over nothing, but he sat. Stretched out his leg, braced himself back on his hands to stay out of Charles’ way. Radiated the desire to swat Charles away and limp off to lick his wounds in peace, but held off. Let Charles peel the drenched fabric from the new hole in his leg, his grumbling cut off into a low hiss. 

The bullet had shot clean through the muscle. By Charles’ estimation, it had missed the bone by a hair.

“We’ll ride to somewhere with better cover and pitch our tents,” Charles said, tone booking no argument. “Your leg wouldn’t appreciate the half-day ride back to camp.” 

“I’ve ridden farther with worse,” was Arthur’s clever rebuttal, stubborn as always. His face had began to pale, sweat springing out on his forehead.

“You aren’t as young as you used to be,” Charles retorted, dry. “Do you want to ride forever farther without a leg?”

Arthur harrumphed. Curled his hands in the ground, dust clinging to the tacky, half-dried blood on his fingers. Searched Charles’ face for _something_ , though Charles couldn’t fathom what. 

He’d been told he was hard to read plenty of times, though the words were rarely that kind. Didn’t make sense, as he always felt he wore his heart on his sleeve. Felt often like an exposed nerve, in fact. Like a big, bleeding wound, ever-ready for the world to jab another knife in, his inability to live a convincing lie or to soften his opinions inviting the worst of others at every turn.

By how Arthur looked at him, eyes wide and wondering and pained and awed, he felt seen.

With adrenaline fading, the clench in his chest slowly relaxing, and the smell of blood and dust and everything earthly between them, he wasn’t sure how to handle it. 

Arthur said, “Would’ve been dead if it weren’t for you.”

Charles replied, “Could say the same.”

Their words were softer than they had to be. 

Between them, fate’s thread glowed brighter than the sun and redder than blood.

Arthur’s shoulders tensed anew. Charles held himself very, very still.

A bit of him was curious to see what would happen. The rest of him already knew what to expect.

All of him froze as Arthur’s eyes dropped to his mouth. As his unbloodied hand unclenched from the ground and moved, clumsy in its speed, to grip Charles’ shoulder, the cotton bunching under his fingers. As he hesitated, as he leaned forward, as he wavered and paused, an inch of space between their faces.

Without a first, let alone second, thought, Charles closed that gap.

Nothing more than the press of mouths, it shouldn’t have been much. The ambush’s fight lingered around them, charging the air with rusted copper and iron. Between them, a spark -- and smoke, heat rising in Charles’ stomach to fill his throat and then his head. His heart told him the rest of the world would have to wait; this was what they’d been building toward for what had to be years, if not decades, and nothing was to come between it. 

Except Arthur shifted his legs and opened his mouth for a pained breath, not a moan, and the world crashed back in.

Charles pulled back. Arthur’s face twisted, half discomfort and half self-deprecation. Any other moment, and it would’ve made Chales feel awkward himself; in this moment, it made him settle his hands once again on Arthur’s shoulders. He gave him a comforting squeeze, in a show of _we’ll return to that later_ , because--- they would. 

Probably. 

Hopefully. 

Very hopefully. 

(Admittedly, they had a lot to work out.)

Before then, they needed cover and some distance, lest any do-gooders ride by and get it in their head to report the newly dead. 

“Let’s wrap up that leg and find somewhere to lay low.”

“Sure. Right. Good idea.” Spoken first in a near daze, the flush in his cheeks from the kiss stark against the pallor. Though he dipped his chin to his chest, he kept his eyes on Charles. Didn’t look away even as Charles looked back. Didn’t seem able to. Wonder had overtaken his expression, open and honest and too curious for Charles to notice without feeling heat rise in his face, too.

Just as Arthur wasn’t suddenly so shy, Charles felt the need to keep a hand on him. So he did-- fetched the wraps he carried just in case of situations like this from Taima’s saddlebags, bound Arthur’s leg, and thereafter helped him up with an arm under his shoulder and across his back. Stood there as support for him to lean against while he whistled for his horse.

Waited with him. Felt Arthur’s gaze weigh on him. Didn’t make himself meet it, sure they wouldn’t be getting anywhere if he did, and they really needed to.

Arthur got himself up on his horse’s back without help, though he grimaced all the way. 

On their way out, Charles rustled through the sniper’s bag. Found them three packs of rifle ammunition, a knapsack of rations, a pouch of herbs Arthur recognized as ginseng, three dollars cash, and a sheaf of papers that included Arthur’s wanted poster, mail from the Blackwater sheriff about the van der Linde’s known affiliates (Trelawney was named, though presumed missing), and a newspaper clipping from farther out West that promised bonuses for Dutch’s boys’ scalps. The article noted that the western cattle town’s four prominent families had pooled their resources to ensure the bounty. 

Charles kept it all. The bag, too, as it was sturdy and of good quality.

On their way to the treeline that promised a dense forest and good cover, they passed grazing buffalo. The beasts watched them lazily, as if aware of their safety after their moment’s panic. 

Charles barely gave them a second thought. Behind all of them, ravens already began to circle the downed hunters’ bodies. 

Arthur could very easily have become a bird’s dinner. 

Charles didn’t enjoy rushing. With the spark of a kiss on his lips and what _could have been_ in his mind’s eye, he decided he didn’t much enjoy waiting, either.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> phew! took a bit, but finally kicked this out. these boys are so in love, it's killer. :'(

The second time Charles and Arthur kissed, that was all it was.

The third time, not so much.

Sweet did not fit Arthur Morgan. Mary had tried calling him such, once. Eliza, before her, the same. Difference was, Eliza had known it a joke, her expression a smirking grin even as she’d said it. On the other hand, Mary hadn’t let go of the idea. She hadn’t ever moved past what she imagined he _could_ be. 

Sweet didn’t fit as a could, would, or ever had quality for Arthur Morgan. He’d never had to deny the accusation aloud, because it was obvious after any amount of time in his presence.

When Charles caught him staring over the fire, the thought struck him that maybe he should say it aloud. It being, _I’m not a nice man._

Tipsy on bourbon to dull his leg’s ache, camp pitched on the soft, leaf- and pine-padded floor between the Cumberland Forest’s towering tree, firewood crackling and smoke a wistful white, the night’s chilled air had a sweetened edge. The quiet was well-worn into a comforting familiarity. Cozy, like the bedrolls and blankets Charles’ laid out while Arthur sat on his ass and cooked a dinner of a rabbit Charles had shot on their way to the quiet spot, Charles having insisted he leave the tent-pitching to the one without the bum leg. He’d just been shot, not crippled; it hurt when bumped, sure, but not so bad he couldn’t pitch a tent. So he said, and so Charles dismissed, saying he’d rather have dinner ready when the tents were pitched than Arthur overestimating himself and falling into their hard work half-way through.

Thing was, he’d told Charles he wasn’t a nice man. There was a difference, though, between nice and sweet. Grimshaw could be nice, but she was never sweet. Dutch could be sweet, but he was in no way nice. Those weren’t the best examples.

Charles wasn’t much sweet or nice, either. Difference there was, he could be. Showing Arthur how to hunt buffalo, telling him the history he never would’ve known, that was sweet. Helping him with bettering his arrows, passing on the techniques to set a wagon afire from eighty yards out without being spotted by the drivers, that was real nice.

The red thread between them, that was sweet. Charles played around with it when camp’d been set up and dinner eaten, the two of them killing time around the fire before they split for sleep and watch. Arthur stretched himself out and propped himself on an elbow while Charles sat, cross-legged, his side not a hand’s span away from Arthur’s head. How Charles wrapped it around his hand, fingers plucking delicately at the red, hazy string, letting it shift and sway in a slowed mockery of how a thread would _actually_ behave-- that was nice. 

Used to be annoying. Used to frustrate him for no good reason, seeing Charles fidget with it. Maybe because he thought with how it moved, he should feel the tugs instead of what he actually felt, which was a light pull not on his finger, but in his heart, an irrational, stupendously sentimental impulse to follow and close the distance and never again leave. Then again, maybe he’d grown frustrated because he couldn’t bring himself to do the same. Hell, he still had trouble with looking at it too long. A bit of him was positive if he did, it’d disappear. Frustrating though the silent tugging was, he knew in his bones that it’d be much worse to forever lose.

 _Most likely_ , it frustrated him because those in camp wouldn’t quit their teasing over it. If Charles noticed how Sean’s eyebrows waggled or Mary Beth hid a grin behind her hand, he didn’t care. Probably, he didn’t even realize what he was doing.

Had to be that, because out in the woods, without any prying eyes -- Arthur found he didn’t give a hoot, either. Enjoyed watching Charles mess with the thread, even.

Plain enjoyed watching him, actually. That was a truth too big for even Arthur to ignore.

Except: Charles noticing _him_ watching, that brought the truth and slapped Arthur across the face with it. 

Made him pull his eyes from how the fire lined Charles’ face with the warmest orange. He furrowed his brow and cooked up how to say _he_ wasn’t and couldn’t be sweet or nice.

Unfortunately, Charles interrupted his thinking before he could reach a permissible conclusion. 

He said, “Arthur.”

“Yeah?”

Arthur didn’t dare budge an inch. He kept his hands folded in front of him. Wondered at how his heart ached to turn toward Charles even as he stopped fidgeting and so the string ceased its swaying and thrumming, but didn’t give in to it. 

If Charles asked how his leg was for the third time that night, the silence would lose its companionable comfort. Arthur could take only so much fretting, from Charles or anybody.

Charles didn’t ask about his leg.

Charles said, “You can lean on me, you know. Has to be more comfortable than whatever you’re doing to your neck right now.”

That’d be true. His neck was cramping from holding itself at an angle proper enough to watch the fire right-ways up.

Arthur said, “Huh.” Then, “Guess I could.”

Thought about the kiss he’d stolen amidst the dead.

Put a stop to that, lest the companionable silence be ruined in a different fashion.

Found it tarnished anyway, as Charles said, in the easiest, no bullshit but nice as hell anyway voice possible, “Well?” -- because he was an impatient fucker who hated man-made uncertainties even if he didn’t act like it. For somebody who didn’t mind crouching in bug-ridden underbrush for hours at a time waiting for an elk to make itself known, he sure couldn’t stand to wait for a person to make up their minds.

Flicker of frustration, there. 

Doused into an odd calm when Arthur figured he was tired of pussyfooting around, himself. Pushed himself a hand’s span closer and propped his head on Charles’ thigh. 

Charles offered him more of the bourbon. He sat up enough for a swallow, passed it back, and settled back down as Charles took his own swig. The bottle glistened in his hand afterward, streaked in the fire’s yellow and string’s red, loosely held and tilted precariously into the dirt. 

Eventually, Charles’ other hand found its way onto Arthur’s shoulder. 

They’d remained vigilant for followers since stopping to pitch the tent. As the adrenaline from the hunters faded with time, bourbon, and the solid weight of Charles’ presence, Arthur let his eyes droop. 

Together like that, they watched the fire turn the kindling and broken branches into ash. The forest rustled with small nightlife that had no interest in the quiet men. A breeze wound its way around them, its chill muted by the camp’s growing warmth.

“I’ll take first watch,” Charles proposed after a good half hour of silence. 

Arthur agreed easily. “Sounds good.”

They lingered a while longer in front of the fire. Charles’ thumb stroked down the side of Arthur’s shoulder, a gentle, hypnotic movement that lulled Arthur closer to sleep than he necessarily wanted to be. Then again, with Charles taking first shift, it was for the best.

In truth, Arthur’s neck had cramped from being propped against Charles’ leg. Similarly, Charles must’ve grown stiff from sitting on the ground without anything to lean against. 

Arthur pushed himself up as if his back didn’t pop in two places. The ache in his neck made him appreciate Hosea’s insistence on taking extra padding when they ventured from camp, and in the same moment, made him inwardly grouse, _I’m too young for that just yet._

Before he fully got to his feet, however, and certainly far before he could lumber off to a proper bed, Charles turned his head to the side and dropped his eyes to Arthur’s mouth, his eyebrows lowering a fraction in a question that for the last few weeks, Arthur had done his damnedest to avoid answering.

Thing was, he’d answered it with the first kiss, hadn’t he. 

Deciding the answer was the same, he kissed Charles a second time.

It went better without the dead surrounding them. Arthur lived and breathed gunpowder and blood-- but those instruments of reality didn’t have a place in a kiss, especially not one as sweet as Charles’.

It started as just a press of lips.

It escalated in short order. Arthur darted his tongue along Charles’ mouth; he parted his lips and let Arthur shift closer, let him deepen the kiss; sucked his bottom lip between his teeth and nipped, and gripped his shoulder tight. Moved with Arthur. Made him start to think that Charles wasn’t _letting_ him do anything, but in fact encouraging it.

Confirmed the thought when another hand found his front and snagged his jacket’s lapel, tugging him until he was near half over Charles’ lap. To be fair, it wasn’t far to go. He set his hand to Charles’ side, curled it in the loose, dried needles of the forest floor. Shifted most of his weight to his good leg, its knee pressed to Charles’ folded legs. Felt precarious. Felt like it’d be much more comfortable if he just climbed on. Felt, too, like Charles might not mind, though he was sure that was one hell of a presumption.

Around them, the forest’s noises quieted to nothing. All there was, was the miniscule space between them, and the burning need to close it.

Except Arthur’s mind wouldn’t let him, not until he got out what he’d meant to get out.

And so he blurted when they pulled back for a second’s breath, “I’m not a nice man.”

“What?” Charles’s head jerked back an inch, shock slackening his jaw. He stared at him, wide-eyed, baffled and breathy. Arthur tried not to let the latter quality overshadow the first, though he found it difficult, because _he’d caused that_ , and he was-- he was proud. He wanted to cause it more. Really, really wanted to cause it more.

He licked his lips. Ignored how dry his mouth felt, and how closed up his throat got when he noticed Charles’ blown-black eyes darting down to follow the movement.

“I-- I mean, in general, I’m not… I don’t know how to be sweet or nothing. Though I think,” and here he paused, cut himself off, confused at his own track of thought. The words tangled in his mouth, unrecognizable from what he’d meant, and that wouldn’t do. 

“You think too much,” Charles said before he could work it out. He sounded less baffled. More amused. The surprise at Arthur’s declaration receded quick, replaced by an expression too soft and sweet for Arthur to look at for long. “Just be, for a moment.”

“Huh,” Arthur said, _drawled_. Felt troubled by the amusement, even though he deserved it. He wanted Charles to know what he meant, as he clearly didn’t. Moreover, what Charles said sounded like one of Dutch’s philosophies: great in theory, impossible in practice, and completely confusing either way. “What’s that supposed to mean, exactly?”

“This.”

Hand tightening on his shoulder and tugging him closer by his jacket, Charles kissed him again.

Arthur decided he’d tried to warn Charles, and gave in to the sweet, nice business of kissing.

Turned out it was more comfortable on his lap than kneeling half over him. Making an appreciative noise Arthur would never in a thousand lives forget, Charles settled his hands on Arthur’s hips like they’d always belonged there. Kept his grip comparatively light, however, which made Arthur wonder if he were as full of awe at what was happening as Arthur was. 

Turned out, too, the reason the forest had gone so quiet was because a black bear had caught scent of their cooking and wanted in on the grub. The horses startling awake at the animal’s twig-snapping approach broke Arthur and Charles’ kiss apart, though they embarrassingly took their time in doing so. 

Luckily, the bear was easily frightened by what it had thought to be a sleepy, quiet camp turning into two grown men leaping up and yelling at it to _go away_. It raced back into the night with enough ruckus to attract people from five counties over. Calming the horses took another good bit of time. All in all, it became clear just how badly distracted they’d been with one another.

Arthur, though ready to leap back into the matters interrupted, was not so gone that he felt willing to risk apprehension by hunters or notice of the law for a tumble in the tent. Charles, though similarly irritated by the interruption, felt the same, as he cleared his throat and kept an arm’s length distance from Arthur, body turned away as he said, “I’ll get to watching for any other intruders. You turn in.”

“I’ll do that.” Arthur also cleared his throat. Righted his jacket and rumpled jeans, too, even though he was just going to crawl into bed. “If that one comes back, feel free to teach her some manners with a bullet or two.”

“Oh, I will. All goes well, you’ll wake up to bear stew.”

They both nodded at the same time. Arthur cleared his throat again, as the whole exchange suddenly hit him as very funny, but he knew laughing would just make falling asleep even harder.

 _It isn’t as if he’s going anywhere_ , Arthur thought that night.

It was the first time he’d acknowledged the possibility of permanence. As sleep swiftly claimed him after, he had no time for second guessing. 

Just _being_ \-- it was better that way.

When Charles woke him to trade shifts, his mind was too sleep-blurred and his leg too pained for anything sweet or nice. They began the trip to camp early the next day, taking the long road away from buffalo and vulture, human or otherwise.

* * *

To Arthur’s nonexistent embarrassment, the third kiss happened before they reached camp. 

They stopped for lunch at Valentine’s tavern. 

The bartender warned Arthur off from causing more trouble, moments before a regular sidled up to hand him a congratulatory beer. When he spotted Charles, he offered him one, too. 

They pretended they were there for a short afternoon drink. Then, while Charles got caught up in an arm-wrestling match that the regular’s friend demanded of him, Arthur pretended to be there to gamble. He won a few hands of poker. Charles won every match. 

The afternoon passed. They had dinner. They drank more.

They pretended the camp was too far to reach before nightfall, and that reaching camp before nightfall would have mattered for a well-armed duo like them. 

On their way to the inn, a trio of O’Driscolls decided to try their luck against Dutch’s best boy and his shambling bear of a soulmate. As such, Arthur and Charles felt well within their rights to beat the men bloody in the alley between the general store and gunsmith. Though the law showed, they recognized a dispute they didn’t belong in; they thanked Arthur and Charles for not killing anybody, and then told them in not so polite terms to _fuck off._

Heading into the inn with knuckles bruised, leg a dull throbbing ache just barely numbed by drink, and sporting a split lip, Arthur pretended that they wanted a room to sleep. By the owner’s narrow-eyed look, he didn’t buy it. Arthur didn’t have to pretend not to care about that. Only reason he would was if the owner decided to have a moral crisis in the middle of the night and tossed their dirt-covered, living-rough selves out on their asses.

Far as Arthur knew that night, the owner took his payment and minded his own business.

A good thing, as their pretending to sleep didn’t get too far.

Charles went in the room first. He had the beginnings of a black eye and tender ribs where an O’Driscoll got a lucky shot, and could barely hold his right arm up without it shaking from all the wrestling. Three and a half steps into the room, he dropped the saddlebag he’d brought in for safekeeping, sized up the barebones room, and turned on a heel toward Arthur. If he swayed gently on the spot from drink that had yet to fade, nobody pointed it out.

Arthur took two steps into the room, dropped his own satchel, and shut the door. He paused. He licked his lip, tasting copper and feeling the grove where it’d split. 

He glanced over his shoulder to Charles. Saw how he watched Arthur. Felt a bolt of warmth in his gut over the weight, and the lack of pretending that it meant anything but what Charles honestly felt. 

He locked the door.

Charles backed him against it in seconds. Crowded into his space, hands hovering a moment, light and startling as a bullet whistling past Arthur’s ears, on either side of his head. Then the moment passed, and he twisted his hands in the collar of his leather hunting jacket and pulled him in.

The first attempt at their third kiss missed the mark. Charles’ mouth crashed into the side of Arthur’s. Prompted a huff of a laugh, as the ridiculousness of it all struck him. The whole of it _was_ absurd: the start to the present, from a handshake to glances to the goddamned _bear_ that’d driven them to this wordless grab at--, a poor excuse for kissing. Hell, with all the skulking around town and pretending they weren’t sneaking glances every five seconds at each other, they might as well have been a pair of teenagers experiencing their first tumble into the hay.

(They’d already done that part, though, hadn’t they? Been real teenagers about it too, awkward as hell and avoiding each other’s gazes and talking as if the tension weren’t nothing.)

Perhaps Charles had mind reading abilities he hadn’t previously disclosed, because he straightened himself out, tilted his head the right way for them to fit together, and turned the poor kiss into a hell of a good one. Their teeth clicked and it was more than a little sloppy as they tried and failed to figure out who led who. Immediately, Arthur enjoyed it.

Before he knew it, Arthur had his arms around Charles’ wide waist. The door creaked as their combined weight fell against it, Charles slotting a leg between Arthur’s as if it’d always belonged there.

Between them, heat built fast. Arthur murmured a curse between one panting breath and the next as he knocked his head back against the door and his hat tumbled to the floor, Charles’ mouth falling to his throat and mouthing along the stubble-roughened skin. 

Charles’ white-dotted shirt, while softer than it looked, had the annoying quality of being longer than the average shirt, and much more difficult to get a hand in. Arthur vaguely thought that a shame, especially as Charles had undone several of his shirt’s buttons and gotten a hand on _him_. Callused fingers wandered across the planes of his fluttering stomach, up his ribs and across his chest, encouraging Arthur to rise on his toes even as he wanted so much to bear down on the leg between his.

Another curse, as his leg reminded him he shouldn’t’ve been contemplating either. 

Again proving he was a mind reader, Charles asked, his voice impossibly low, “Bed?”

Arthur made a noise of agreement. He’d liked to have called the noise _words_ , but that would’ve been a great exaggeration of his coherence. 

Charles pulled his hands out of Arthur’s mostly undone shirt and backed up, presumably to do as he’d said and head to the bed. Something resembling indignation and panic over them being separated made Arthur reach a hand for his face, and pull him into a kiss; by the half surprised catch of breath Charles made and how he obligingly kept himself well within reach, he didn’t mind too much. 

They made their way to the bed like that, distracted and caught up in one another. Charles’ foot caught the rickety chair in the room’s corner and sent it clattering to the ground. Neither of them spared it more than half a thought, especially as it meant a stumble that landed them on the bed faster than anticipated in a tangle of limbs. 

Any other time, Arthur would’ve scoffed at how rushed they were. Before they’d even sorted out who was where, Arthur was helping Charles remove his shirt, his heart in his throat and mouth dry as the desert with anticipation. He stroked down Charles’ chest with something approaching reverence, as he might handle the most delicate jewelry after a heist. Brushed, with especial care, over the darkened bruise where the damn O’Driscoll got lucky-- and further down, across hardened and hard-earned muscles. Marveled, briefly, at just how much of Charles there was, when he spent so much of his time making himself small and unobtrusive. Then Charles’ hand was on Arthur’s chest, pushing him down flat to the bed, power rippling along his arm, and he sat himself on Arthur’s lap with the same intense focus he used in tracking cougar, and Arthur was swept up in awe of a baser, hungrier nature. 

In the end, they didn’t even fully remove their clothing. Just undid what was necessary to reach each other. Suspenders were pushed off shoulders and left to dangle, their trousers hardly off their hips, union suits unbuttoned but left otherwise intact. 

And still, the first moment Charles wrapped a hand around his dick and he got a hand on Charles’, stole Arthur’s breath right from his chest. All he knew was the man on him. Eyes lidded, blood thudding in his ears, he struggled upward as well as he could-- and then fell back, as Charles leaned down and pressed his forehead to Arthur’s, his eyes fluttering shut. The bed was too warm. Arthur’s skin was too warm. 

For a time, it was too much: he felt too small in his own body, his heart fit to burst from beneath his ribs, his gut twisted into knots that’d surely tear him apart. Only in sharing it - in the scant space left between them, in the bump of their noses as Arthur tilted his head for a chaste kiss, both of them too distracted by their hands to focus on deepening it - only in combination did the moment feel anywhere close to manageable. 

He wondered if Charles felt the same. He wondered if it was fate. He doubted it could be, because fate had never been kind to him, and this was certainly too ideal a moment for his track record. Far as he knew, Charles could say the same.

It felt like this would be the first and last chance they had with one another. 

_That_ thought, all its weight and all its threat, pushed Arthur over the edge. He shuddered as he came, mouth slackening and breath punched out of him, everything in him tensing and releasing in a mind-numbing tumble through pleasure. 

Often, words cooperated least with Arthur when he needed them most. Following his climax, he thought a dozen things to say. None made it past his lips. The best he managed was a kiss to Charles’ neck, mouth pressed over his pulse point. 

Charles fell soon after him. He dropped his head to Arthur’s shoulder, whispered something affectionate and awe-struck into his skin. Branded adoration into him through the sentiment, though he couldn’t catch the meaning. 

It didn’t matter what was said, he’d realize later, half-asleep with Charles’ arm across his waist and head on his chest, sheets cast aside as they cooled off, sweat chill on their bare skin. They understood one another. It didn’t need to be more complicated than that.

All he could hope was that while it had been a first, it wouldn’t be the last.

(Charles, as it turned out, agreed.)

* * *

They returned to camp two days later than they’d intended. No one brought it up, and so they didn’t, either. 

They parted without looking at one another. Not because they _couldn’t_ , or wouldn’t, or - as before - were liable to act a fool if they looked at each other too long, but because they’d reached a plenty fine understanding of where they stood, and there was no need to talk twice on something settled.

(Later, Pearson remarked he’d been looking forward to cooking bison. Then he’d paused, glanced sidelong at where Charles sat - minding his own business, a knife and whetstone in hand - by the fire, then back to Arthur and, in a move that was subtle for Pearson but loud as a stampede for anybody else, mused that Javier often had better luck at not getting distracted when he went hunting.)

On parting, the backs of their hands brushed, red oh-so-bright between them, and oh-so-slow to fade as they attended to what business the camp demanded.

Hosea glanced up from his newest novel as Arthur passed. A cursory glance at first, and then a more scrutinizing double-take. 

Having a feeling he didn’t want to know whatever Hosea saw that was worth a double take, Arthur gave him a nod and kept going. There was firewood to chop, and hay to distribute to the horses, and buckets of water to fill, because apparently nobody knew how to do their job without somebody breathing down their necks about it. 

The highly amused, “You’re looking well-rested, my boy,” and cackling to follow him, had to be based on pure Hosea-brand heckling. Arthur didn’t deign to acknowledge it lest Hosea draw further wild conclusions about what their hunting trip entailed. 

For one, Charles and he had cleaned up well in the inn’s bath before leaving. For another, they definitely hadn’t caught more than an hour’s worth of sleep (mostly, admittedly, from lack of trying).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
> 
> Thank you for reading! Find me in the comments, on [tumblr](http://unkingly.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](http://twitter.com/exkingly) for more yeehaw content (because hell if this game & its cast still doesn't have my heart).


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